1. Technical Field of the Invention
This disclosure generally relates to methods of fabricating semiconductor devices and more specifically to methods of fabricating silicide layers that are aligned to source/drain regions.
2. Description of the Related Art
A conventional method for fabricating a semiconductor device is to form a silicide layer on source/drain regions and on a polysilicon gate. The silicide layer provides various advantages such as a good ohmic contact, lowering the resistance of the polysilicon gate, and providing an etch stop layer to the source/drain region and the polysilicon gate.
A conventional process for forming a silicide layer is a self-aligned silicide process, also known as a salicide process. The salicide process includes a step of forming a metal layer, for instance, formed of cobalt, nickel or titanium combining silicon without reacting with a silicon oxide layer and a silicon nitride layer. The metals react with the silicon to form a low-resistance silicide such as CoSi2, NiSi or TiSi2. The salicide process is applied to the semiconductor substrate with a gate electrode and source/drain region to form an aligned silicide layer on the source/drain regions and on the gate electrode with exposed silicon. The salicide process may form a thin and uniform silicide layer on the source/drain region and on the gate electrode.
In processes for fabricating semiconductor devices, a trench isolation layer is used for electrically isolating unit elements adjacent to each other. However, the trench isolation layer has a disadvantage that a dent is formed on a boundary with the active region.
FIGS. 1 and 2 are cross-sectional diagrams illustrating a conventional method for fabricating semiconductor devices.
Referring to FIG. 1, an isolation layer 12 is formed in a semiconductor substrate 10 to define an active region 14 by a trench isolation technique. As shown in FIG. 1, it is common for a dent to form in the isolation layer 12 neighboring the active region 14.
Referring to FIG. 2, a gate pattern 16 is formed on the active region 14, and source/drain regions 18 are formed in the active region neighboring the gate pattern 16. Sidewall spacers 20 are formed on sidewalls of the gate pattern 16. Continuously, a conventional salicide process is applied to the resultant structure to form a silicide layer 22 on the source/drain regions 18 and the gate pattern 16. Because a dent D exists on a boundary between the active region 14 and the isolation layer 12, the silicide layer 22 is formed along a topology of the dent because the silicide layer provided by the salicide process is thin and uniform. Therefore, the silicide layer 22 forms a deep spike 26 to a bottom of the substrate in the dent D. As a result, leakage current occurs due to a focusing of electrical field through the spike 26, making the resulting shallow source/drain structure ineffective for preventing short channel effects such as punch through.
Embodiments of the invention address these and other disadvantages of the prior art.